


The Director You Wish to Reach is Unavailable at the Moment

by doctorhelena



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic Bliss, F/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), SHIELD, Sexual Frustration, Steggy Week 2020, Telephones, director peggy carter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25386838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorhelena/pseuds/doctorhelena
Summary: Peggy Carter is good at many things. Delegating isn't one of them.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 20
Kudos: 130
Collections: Steggy Week





	The Director You Wish to Reach is Unavailable at the Moment

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Day 1 of Steggy Week 2020 (Domestic Bliss).

Steve loved Peggy with all of his heart, but being married to the Director of SHIELD was far more frustrating at times than he’d imagined, back when time travel had been only an impossible dream. 

It wasn’t the nature of the work itself - Peggy worked long hours because the job was important, and even longer hours because of information that he, himself, had brought along with him when he’d appeared on her doorstep a year ago with the startling news that neither he, Bucky, nor Hydra were quite as dead as previously believed. And he understood why, with his utter lack of security clearance, she wasn’t always at liberty to discuss exactly what she was up to.

No, it was just that he thought he finally understood why Nick Fury had seemed so profoundly irritated most of the time. In the age of cell phones, the man probably hadn’t had an uninterrupted fifteen minutes to himself in years. No wonder he’d faked his own death.

In 1950, of course, it was a little harder to reach someone if one didn’t know precisely where they were, and since Steve’s return he and Peggy had enjoyed a perfectly reasonable number of uninterrupted evenings out - although even then, an apologetic SHIELD agent had sought her out at the Stork Club more than once. 

The real problem, though, was that SHIELD knew where she lived. Or, more to the point, that SHIELD was able to easily reach her by phone when she was there. And, although Steve absolutely understood that she had to answer because any call could be unexpectedly important, the overwhelming majority of them, in his opinion, really weren’t.

Peggy, for all her stellar qualities, was terrible at delegating.

Part of it, he knew, was a legitimate concern that some of the men under her command would use any excuse to try to take over, cutting her out of the loop and disrespecting her authority. Part, he thought, was probably habit from the years when she hadn’t been taken seriously and had thus, paradoxically, been able to maintain complete control over the unauthorized investigations she’d undertaken without support. And part of it, too, was her uncertainty over who she could trust, in an organization that she now knew was being infiltrated by the enemy. 

Whatever the reason, they’d both started to dread the ringing of the telephone.

They’d been lucky so far this evening, getting through their entire meal uninterrupted, laughing together at Peggy’s account of Howard’s latest romantic misadventure and Steve’s story about the small children across the street successfully smuggling an enormous dog into their house right under their parents’ noses. All the while, they’d traded frankly smouldering glances, Peggy’s foot sneaking up the inside of Steve’s calf, until they’d both set down their forks and pushed their chairs back, Peggy climbing into his lap and beginning to unbutton his shirt before their lips had even properly met, his hand already curved around her upper thigh.

The phone had rung then, of course, and she’d sighed and hopped off his lap to go answer it. Steve wasn’t sure if it counted as eavesdropping - Peggy was perfectly aware that he could hear both ends of the conversation, even when she was in the other room - but he knew, before she returned, that it hadn’t been particularly important. “That could have waited until morning,” he said, and she sighed.

“I know. But I’d rather err on the side of urgency - you know as well as I do that I’m looking for signs that not everyone is privy to.” And she was, in fact, trying to get a picture of Hydra’s activities without tipping anybody off that she knew. Steve still privately thought she could do it just as easily with a summary report in the morning.

He’d passed the time while she was on the phone by stacking up the dishes, and Peggy glanced at them now. “I suppose we should clear the table,” she said, reluctantly.

“We should,” he agreed, and stood up to kiss her. She smiled against his lips and wrapped her arms around his neck, going up onto her tiptoes as his hand splayed across her rear end, pulling her closer. “But it can wait.”

He actually had his hand just inside the waistband of her underwear before the phone rang again, and she swore and dropped her fingers from his belt buckle. Steve sighed as she pushed herself up and went to answer, managing, as always, to sound as breezily unaffected as if she’d just been interrupted doing a crossword puzzle.

It was Howard, which meant she was probably going to be a while. Steve got up off the couch and moved the dishes to the kitchen, filling the sink with warm, soapy water and then, when she still hadn’t returned, picking up the dishcloth. Half the dishes were washed and rinsed, waiting in the rack to be dried, by the time she finally joined him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Howard was being - Howard.” She picked up the dish towel and stepped up to the counter. “I suppose we ought to finish the job.”

Steve handed her a plate. “I’m starting to think maybe we shouldn’t have started the job,” he said, a little more grouchily than he’d intended.

“Oh,” she said, quietly, looking down at her hands as she set the dry plate on the counter and took another damp one from the dish rack. The silence stretched out. “Darling, I don’t know what I can - ” She sounded nearly as frustrated as he felt.

“I'm not saying we should air our private business to the world,” Steve said, setting a spoon in the dish rack, “but Howard of all people would have understood if you’d told him you were busy.”

“I know,” she said. “I just - I don’t particularly relish the comments he’d be making at the office for the next week or so.”

Well, that was a good point. “Fair enough,” Steve conceded. “But, Peggy - if we’d been out, you would have missed all those calls, and they would have tried back again later. Or saved it for tomorrow.” He didn’t particularly miss cell phones at this moment, he thought ruefully, but he sure did miss voicemail. He dried his hands on the towel she was holding and then reached out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I know it’s possible something could come up that really can’t wait for an hour, but if it was that urgent, they’d keep trying. Or someone would come to the house.”

Peggy raised an eyebrow. “And you think that would be better?”

“It wouldn’t happen very often,” he said, quietly.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said, after a moment, taking the last fork from the dish rack, drying it, and setting it down on the counter with the others. Steve took the towel from her hands and hung it up. “It’s just - when the telephone rings, I can’t help but speculate that it might be something - ”

Steve began to put the dishes back in the cupboard and Peggy reached around him for the cutlery, her body suddenly pressed flush against his back. His breath caught, and hers did too. “I’ll try to ignore the telephone,” she said hoarsely, and he closed the cupboard door and turned around in her arms. 

Peggy dropped the cutlery with a clatter as Steve crowded her against the counter and began to kiss up her jawline to her ear, pressed so closely against her that his newly revitalized interest was impossible to miss. She reached for his belt again, her fingers almost frantic, and he slid his hand back to where it had been earlier, just past the waistband of her underwear, and then further. Her interest was also impossible to miss, he discovered, and he guessed that if he somehow had, the sound she’d just made would probably have clued him in. She had his belt open now, and was working at the buttons on his fly, and then - oh God - her hand was inside his shorts, her fingers wrapped around him, and - the phone rang again. She froze.

Steve sighed, and gently disentangled them. “Go answer it.”

Peggy gave him a regretful, immensely frustrated look as she turned to go, then yelped as she stepped on a fork. It served her right, he thought a little uncharitably, as he watched her hop the rest of the way to the phone on one foot. He gathered the spilled cutlery from the floor, washed it again, dried it, then put it away, along with the rest of the dishes.

“I don’t think I can keep doing this right now,” he told her bluntly, once she’d hung up. “I love you, but I need to - just go take a shower.”

Peggy nodded, her pupils still dark, her cheeks flushed, her face a mixture of regret and blazing, ravenous desire. “I - ” She looked, suddenly, like she was going to cry. “Steve, I don’t know what to do. I can’t - ”

He sighed. “You can’t ignore the phone. I know. Maybe - we need a weekend away. Somewhere isolated, where SHIELD can’t - ” 

“Maybe,” she agreed, still looking a little forlorn. “I just - ”

Steve lifted both hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know, Peg. Should we get you some really good earplugs? Go out to the garage and do it in the car? I don’t - ”

Her eyes blazed, but then she swallowed and her pupils grew impossibly darker. “We - we wouldn’t hear the telephone,” Peggy said, quietly, her gaze fixed on his, her mouth half-open.

“For God’s sake, Peggy, we are not going out to the garage to hide from SHIELD,” Steve said, tiredly. 

They stared at each other, neither backing down.

God, he missed the ability to turn off the phone. Or even just to put it on silent, just for a little - oh. Oh! He was an idiot.

He marched over to the phone and swiftly pulled the cord out of the jack in the wall. “There,” he said, and then stalked upstairs and did the same to the extension in the bedroom.

Peggy, who had followed him without saying a word, stared at him, then looked at the phone and bit her lip. “All right,” she said, and kissed him.

They were both still a little annoyed at each other. Peggy bit his lip and yanked down his pants with far more force than necessary, and he ripped two buttons off her shirt. Once they were both down to underwear, she pushed him roughly down onto the bed and climbed on top of him, both of them letting out ragged breaths as their hips met. “If you rip my bra,” she said, breathlessly, placing his hands at the long row of hooks at her back, “you _will_ regret it. It’s new and it was expensive.”

Despite her words she squirmed impatiently against him, her mouth open against his neck. He deliberately slowed down, releasing the hooks down the interminable length of the longline bra with careful precision, but instead of pausing the rhythmic roll of her hips against his as he’d thought she might, she redoubled her efforts, reaching into his shorts to position him to her satisfaction which - was - oh God - making it really hard to concentrate on the hooks. He finally got the bra off and she wriggled out of it, blindly tossing it to the side and then reaching back down to tug his shorts over his hips. He slid his own hands up to her perpetually astonishing breasts, cupping them in his hands and rubbing his thumbs gently over her nipples. He could tell she was very, very close.

He reached one hand down to help her along, but he’d barely touched her when she let out a sudden sob and fell apart spectacularly, before collapsing on top of him, boneless and panting. He held her, without moving, as she recovered, then gently reached down to tug off her panties. She squirmed breathlessly as his thumbs brushed over the vee of her inner thighs. “I’m sorry,” she said, hoarsely. “I didn’t actually mean to - ”

Steve smiled. “I did,” he said, and rolled them over to cover her body with his. Peggy wrapped her legs tightly around him and kissed him, reaching down between them to guide him into place, and all of his annoyance was already gone as he pushed inside her. And then it was just the two of them, as close together as it was possible to be. She rocked up to meet him again and again as he reached his hand between them, listening for the hitch of breath that told him that - oh God - that she was - ohGod - and then everything broke apart at once, Peggy pulsing around him as he spilled into her, and he wondered, vaguely, if this would be the time that their increasingly callous disregard of protection caught up with them.

They should probably talk about that, sometime. 

They lay there for a long time, long after they’d caught their breaths, and then Steve rolled over onto his back, bringing Peggy along with him to settle sprawled on top of his body, her head snuggled into his neck. 

“Should I go plug the phone back in?” he asked her after a moment, drawing lazy circles along her back.

She didn't lift her head. "No. Not yet."

They lay there, drinking in the closeness, the absolute sense of well-being, the certain knowledge that they were meant to be together.

“Look,” Steve said, finally, kissing the top of her head. “I love you, and I love what you do. And I understand that sometimes SHIELD has to come first. But - one thing I learned when I was - away - is that the job will never be done. And we have to carve out space for a life.”

“I know,” she said quietly, into his chest. “But I - ”

He squeezed her a bit tighter. “I know. It’s complicated. You have to work about three times as hard as a man would to get any kind of respect, for one thing, and rooting out Hydra is a big job. It’s hard to know who to trust. But you know, you do trust some people, Peg. Maybe it’s time to - ”

She rolled off him and stared up at the ceiling. “Maybe,” she said, finally. “We’re not going to be able to rescue Barnes next year without some sort of help.”

“Phillips,” Steve said, counting on his fingers. “Howard. And then - Dum Dum, Morita, Jones. Sawyer. Pinkerton. None of them are Hydra. Not after what we all went through together.”

She rolled back over, splaying her hand over his chest. “You’re right. I suppose it is getting to be time to bring them in.” Steve had come back with a list, straight from the horse’s mouth, of all the times and places the Winter Soldier would be out on his own, and they meant to make use of it. Peggy smiled at him. “And - although none of them are particularly in a position to field my calls - perhaps you and I can, occasionally, unplug the telephone.”

Steve smiled back, and leaned in to kiss her. She deepened it with a little hum, but lazily, with no real heat in it.

“Peggy, are - are we trying to have a baby?” he asked suddenly, and she lifted her head and blinked at him. He touched her cheek. “It’s just that, while we’re on the topic of carving out a life, we haven’t always been very - careful, lately.” 

Peggy nodded, then bit her lip. “I know. I - maybe.” She flushed a little. “I - I know it doesn’t make any sense right now. But I - ”

“Me too,” he said, quietly, coiling and uncoiling a lock of her hair around his finger. “I think there probably isn’t ever really going to be a time when it makes sense, but - that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.” He kissed her forehead. “But - I also think maybe we’ve both been hoping it’ll just happen and force our hands. We should probably make sure it’s really what we both want, not just something that happens to us because we were in such a hurry to finish doing the deed before the phone rang again that we didn’t bother to use a rubber.” 

She nodded again, the corners of her mouth turning upwards. “Yes.” There was a silence. “I wouldn’t resign from SHIELD,” she said, all in a rush.

“I would never expect you to,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “And I think Howard and Phillips would back me. But - it wouldn’t be easy, at work, with everyone else.” 

“And you’d probably still need to be in a position to delegate a lot more than you can right now,” he said seriously, watching her as she nodded slowly. He nudged her. “Hey, do you think Dum Dum would make a good secretary?”

Peggy laughed. “Good God. Can you imagine?” 

Steve grinned. “But - Peg, maybe we’re going about this all wrong, with Hydra. Instead of trying to figure out the whole picture on our own before we act - maybe first we need to figure out who we can trust, and let them help us with the rest.” He tugged at a the curl of hair still twined around his finger. “At least, a few people. People who are actually there in the office with you, not still in Europe, or semi-retired, or - or Howard Stark. Whether or not we have a baby, I think you need a team.”

Peggy nodded, slowly. “You’re right. It’s just - if I confide in the wrong person, we’ll lose the element of surprise.”

He kissed her again. “You won’t. Or, if you do, we’ll adjust. You do have a secret weapon, you know.”

“I do,” she said, smiling at him, and rolled on top of him again, her smile widening as she felt his immediate reaction to that. “I don’t suppose you’d like to be my secretary, Captain Rogers.”

“Well,” he said, his hands skimming down her body, “I’m definitely not Hydra, but that would mean your calls would be forwarded to me, which wouldn’t really help with - hgah - ”

Peggy laughed and kissed him.

\-----

“I suppose,” she said, a while later, “that we really ought to plug the telephone back in.”

Steve leaned out to reach for the dangling end of the cord, but he couldn’t quite reach the jack, so he slid out of bed. “I enjoyed our evening out,” he said.

“And I must say, this club has an excellent floor show,” said Peggy, watching him with lazy interest as he bent down to plug in the cord. The phone immediately rang, and they both jumped, then laughed.

She picked up the receiver. “Peggy Carter,” she said, briskly. “Yes, excellent timing, you’ve just caught me coming in the door.”

Steve smiled at her, found his underwear, and made his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth.


End file.
